Mark Reviews Movies: GRETA

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 28, 2019

There are some things to appreciate in Greta, such as the Franz Liszt-infused portions of Javier Navarrete's score or the sometimes cunning ways in which director Neil Jordan subverts or emphasizes the tension of a scene (An "It was all a dream" moment turns out to be all a dream, and a metronome sets the rhythm and suggests the pounding heart of one character within the climax). There's also Isabelle Huppert's performance as a lonely and increasingly unhinged woman, who latches herself to a grieving younger woman and becomes a stalker.

It's the sort of role that would seem to demand that the actor go over and over top after top, but there's real stillness and pain to Huppert's take on the type of character we've seen time and time again. There's also—dare it be said—a certain grace to the performance, although that might simply be the memory of a single scene, in which Huppert's character does a sneaky ballet to catch a victim off-guard (and then does a celebratory one when she does), talking.

The filmmakers and actors obviously have put some thought, care, and effort into this fairly generic thriller, which makes it all the more frustrating. Jordan may give us some intriguingly staged or framed sequences of tension, but there's no avoiding that his screenplay, co-written with Ray Wright, is patently absurd. Characters routinely go against their own, established instincts or do ridiculous things, just so that there can be a series of suspense scenes. Navarrete may incorporate classical music motifs as a means of highlighting the sadness of a character or the tension of a scene, but he also gives us the requisite sting of strings whenever Jordan decides to have someone pop into frame as a cheap startle (There's even a sting at one point when one character is blocking our view of another).

As good as Huppert is here, there's also no avoiding that, once the movie transforms into a thriller (It's as if a switch is flipped and then taped in place), her eponymous character turns out to be nothing more than an insane stalker and soon-to-be killer. What she does with the role is different and sometimes unexpected, but once the gears of this particular and familiar plot start turning, a performance of the crazed stalker/killer really just boils down to how and what kind of crazy we're watching.

The target of Huppert's Greta's quickly revealed fanaticism is Frances (Chloë Grace Moretz), who discovers Greta's seemingly lost purse on a New York City subway car and decides to return it. Much is made of the notion that Frances is naïve in her decision, mostly by her best friend/roommate Erica (Maika Monroe), who thinks Frances isn't cut out for the big city (since Frances originally hails from the tiny, little village of Boston).

After spending some time with the lonely and widowed Greta, Frances learns that her friend was correct about not doing simple acts of kindness for other people. She discovers a cabinet of other purses in Greta's home and immediately deduces that the woman is unstable. Greta confirms that fact by stalking Frances, whom she sees as a surrogate daughter.

To explain where this story ultimately goes would be pointless, because it's mostly inevitable, but it is important to note just how dumb the movie and its characters are to arrive there. The cops are completely unhelpful, of course, thanks to Greta's sly technique of staring at Frances at her work for an entire day on a public sidewalk and the lengthy process of getting a restraining order. For her part, Frances keeps putting herself at unnecessary risk by going back to Greta's home (to check on the woman's dog—a thought that even the most devoted animal-lover might think is at terrible idea) or wandering the streets around her apartment after telling Greta she's going out of town (and knowing that Greta knows where she lives).

The stupidity is passed liberally amongst the movie's characters, too, with Erica going down an empty alley when she knows Greta is following her and Stephen Rea playing a most incompetent private investigator (He lasts about a minute longer than he has any right to). Greta get in on the game, too, being unable to recognize someone she has repeatedly seen and photographed, just because the person is wearing a cheap wig.

Yes, it's that tired kind of approach to this common kind of story. Whatever minor things Greta does differently are completely undermined by its cheap scare tactics, its unbelievably dunderheaded characters, and its unwillingness to do anything that's actually different with this routine setup.

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